Polywell confinement fusion

The polywell is a plasma confinement concept that combines elements of inertial electrostatic confinement and magnetic confinement fusion, intended
ultimately to produce fusion power.
The fundamental idea of the polywell device was conceived in 1983. Research was funded by US military and various small-scale prototypes were built.
Today, the development of this approach is funded by Navy but its underfunded because of wars and other projects like Tokamak. Following submission of
the final WB-7 results in December 2008, Dr Richard Nebel commented that "There's nothing in there [the research] that suggests this will not
work..." Dr. Bussard formed EMC2 Fusion Development Corporation, [1] a non-profit organization, to seek funding for serious continuation of the
project.

In September 2009, the US Department of Defense announced further funding of $7,855,504 for Energy Matter Conversion Corp for research, analysis,
development, and testing in support of the Plan Plasma Fusion (Polywell) Project. Efforts under this Recovery Act award will validate the basic
physics of the Plasma Fusion (Polywell) concept, as well as provide the Navy with data for potential applications of polywell fusion. The project is
expected to be completed by April 2011.[38]

Under development also is an "Open Source" Polywell MaGrid, to be found at the "Prometheus fusion
perfection" weblog. Having demonstrated the feasibility of a Fansworth-Hirsch fusor recently, the next phase of the project is a Polywell, the
parts for which have already been fabricated by 3D Rapid Prototyping.

This approach looks more promising to me than throwing money at Tokamak. What tokamak has achieved with billions, pollywell has achieved with
millions, and first commercial power plants could be producing power as soon as 2020.
It is also much smaller and lightweight, and could even be used to power naval or space ships.

With the success of WB-6, Bussard believed that the system had demonstrated itself to the degree that no intermediate-scale models would be needed,
and noted, "We are probably the only people on the planet who know how to make a real net power clean fusion system"[8] He proposed to rebuild WB-6
more robustly to verify its performance. After conducting and publishing the results of dozens of repeatable tests, he planned to convene a conference
of experts in the field in an attempt to get them behind his design. Assuming his design had been backed, the project would have immediately moved
toward a full-scale demo plant. The first step in that plan was to design and build two more small scale designs (WB-7 and WB-8) to determine which
full scale polyhedral potential well would be best. He wrote “The only small scale machine work remaining, which can yet give further improvements
in performance, is test of one or two WB-6-scale devices but with “square“ or polygonal coils aligned approximately (but slightly offset on the
main faces) along the edges of the vertices of the polyhedron. If this is built around a truncated dodecahedron, near-optimum performance is expected;
about 3-5 times better than WB-6.” [12] Bussard noted that, "Thus, we have the ability to do away with oil (and other fossil fuels) but it will
take 4-6 years and ca. $100-200M to build the full-scale plant and demonstrate it."[8] Bussard said "Somebody will build it; and when it's
built, it will work; and when it works people will begin to use it, and it will begin to displace all other forms of energy."[22] There is some
evidence of this occurring already, with at least one "Open-Source" project to replicate Dr. Bussard's work already well underway under the project
title "Prometheus fusion perfection".

At prometheus fusion they have already achieved fusion and are going to build a complete polywell.. I am curious what the results might be if we spend
all the money used on Tokamak on this instead.

I watched Dr. Bussard's video "Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power..." two to three times. I take the man at his word and
believe that he did what he claimed.

...................................

I agree that the funding is silly small. Factor in the implications of a successfully operating machine (Cost benefit analysis) and you get silly
small disease.

"Nuclear fusion reactors cost billions"

Well, you have two separate things going on. You have 1) research into HOW to build them. And 2) the actual cost TO build them. Compare R&D spent by
the government (tax payer) on other fields (including gas and oil) and you get a clear case of the silly small funding disease.

Given how so many corporations rely on there NOT being low cost energy, one must view those getting into the game with suspicion. No small group of
researchers could operate with such corporate power applying pressure on them to fail. One must realize that those corporations are far from morally
above such things. Their history demonstrates their methodology. MAYBE a less influenced nation could give willing scientists enough space and
safety to do real research into this field. But I certainly do not pin my hopes on the western governments or institutions.

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